The Joy Of Giving Not Just Receiving Is The Key To Lasting Happiness

With the spirit of Christmas around the corner, comes the spirit of giving. And there’s no better time than now to become a giver, if you’re not already one. You know that feeling you get when you gift someone you care about? That warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when you gift or give unconditionally to someone is more beneficial than you think.

In fact, people who are concerned about the well being of others rather than only their own are much happier, claims a recent study published in the journal ‘Psychological Science’.

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"Helping, giving, volunteering, and other actions undertaken to benefit others play a critical role in protecting health, promoting education, fighting poverty and hunger, and providing disaster relief," the researchers said, as reported by ANI.

The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan found that reflecting on the satisfaction you get from helping someone makes you feel more caring & helpful as an individual and motivates you to benefit others even more.

Doing something nice for another person gives many people a pleasant feeling that behavioural economists call a warm glow.

Even a little generosity goes a long way in making yourself happier. "You don't need to become a self-sacrificing martyr to feel happier. Just being a little more generous will suffice," says Philippe Tobler and Ernst Fehr form the Department of Economics a the University of Zurich.

Simply promising to behave generously activated the altruistic area of the brain and intensified the interaction between this area and the area associated with happiness. "It is remarkable that intent alone generates a neural change before the action is actually implemented," says Tobler.

You even stand to benefit from the intent and the promise of being generous.

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Simply promising to behave generously activated the altruistic area of the brain and intensified the interaction between this area and the area associated with happiness. "Promising to behave generously could be used as a strategy to reinforce the desired behavior, on the one hand, and to feel happier, on the other," says Tobler.

His co-author Soyoung Park adds: "There are still some open questions, such as: Can communication between these brain regions be trained and strengthened? If so, how? And, does the effect last when it is used deliberately, that is, if a person only behaves generously in order to feel happier?"